The table is set for Democratic Party Presidential Candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) to feast during the remaining weeks of the 2008 Election.
As a political analyst, I have been astounded and impressed by how steady and patient the Obama Campaign has been during this general election cycle. When pundits suggested that panic was in order subsequent to the Republican National Convention, the Obama Campaign stayed calm, cool, and collected. When the conservative faction of the Republican Party turned to slime and the politics of distraction because they cannot compete on ideas, the Obama camp shrugged it off and stayed on message.
According to the most recent state and national polls, this strategy of consistency has resonated with the American people. Even the Right-wing website realclearpolitics.com has national averages of conservative and independent polls showing Barack Obama with a firm lead nationally - with an electoral map victory to accompany the popular advantage:
CNN/Opinion Research 09/19 - 09/21 Obama +4
Gallup Tracking 09/20 - 09/22 Obama +3
Hotline/FD Tracking 09/20 - 09/22 Obama +4
CBS News/NY Times 09/12 - 09/16 Obama +5
Quinnipiac 09/11 - 09/16 Obama +4
ABC News/Wash Post 09/19 - 09/22 Obama +9
RCP Electoral Count Obama +30
However, with only 42 days until Election Day, the time has come to define a narrative based on a few salient issues leading up to the election - then hammer the Republican Party and its candidate John McCain (R-AZ) with relentless precision.
The list of issues where Democrats are ideologically correct is endless. To dilute the focus of our narrative is to give voters too many opportunities to forget the primary reasons why Barack Obama is a better choice for President come November. After carefully reviewing public opinion polls and conducting my own bi-partisan focus groups here in the great State of Indiana, I have narrowed a large list of concerns down to five tell-tale issues we must focus on if we are to win convincingly in November:
- Energy
During a recent appearance on 'Hardball with Chris Matthews', New Mexico Congresswoman and McCain spokeswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM) was asked directly what McCain would do to take the United States' floundering economy and accompanying 6.1% (and growing) unemployment rate out of recession. Wilson, dodging and weaving in a manner that would make Walt Frazier proud, refused to answer the direct question the first few times when asked by Matthews. When pressed for an answer, she admitted that John McCain's plan consisted of making the Bush tax cuts permanent (and thus continuing to add to a $10 trillion national debt, up $6 trillion from the end of the Clinton presidency) and increasing offshore drilling.
Matthews then brought up a salient point regarding the 'drill here, drill now' mantra of the conservative wing of the Republican party: Once we approve all this offshore drilling, how will we keep the rest of the world from outbidding U.S. oil buyers and distributors and cornering the market on crude oil?
Wilson's response? We live in a WORLD economy. This issue will resonate like NAFTA did during the primaries if Democrats will simply point out to the American people precisely what 'drill here, drill now' means. As a cherry on top, we can point out that the first large oil contract to be awarded by the Iraqi government was to China, of all places. How comfortable are Americans with China, Russia, or OPEC members drilling off our coasts?
- Economy
The collapsing financial market and skyrocketing energy prices should mean that John McCain can kiss his hope for a national security/September 11/fear-mongering narrative goodbye. The United States economy must be the sole primary issue of the 2008 Presidential Election. There are simply too many struggling working class members, businesses (small AND large), and institutions salient to the financial success of our country to focus on anything else. This places the advantage directly in the lap of Barack Obama, as polls consistently indicate that the American public trusts his judgment on matters of economics far more than they trust John McCain.
- McCain = Bush, Bush = McCain
Republican President George W. Bush is the most unpopular Republican president since Richard Nixon on the eve of his resignation. It would be a strategic error of Biblical proportions to allow McCain skirt his association with Bush and the public policies they have in common.
Remember the 1996 Presidential Election contest between President Bill Clinton and challenger Bob Dole? The Democratic Party made sure that almost every ad it ran of Dole had him standing directly behind increasingly unpopular Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Those ads were extremely effective not just because they cemented Dole's stickiness to Gingrich, but because they also solidified his standing as a Right-wing stooge with public policies detrimental to the American working class. Dole couldn't escape his Gingrich association. This election season, McCain must not be allowed to escape his closeness to Bush in nearly every public policy area.
- Regulation/Deregulation
This issue has some real teeth behind it. Democrats have only started to showcase it to the American people, but the history of each party's position and what those positions promise where the current financial market crisis is involved makes it a lights-out winner for Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.
One party, the Republican Party, nearly destroyed the California energy market via its massive deregulation of that industry in the early part of this decade. Its presidential candidate, Senator McCain, has been a lifelong supporter of de-regulation where the economy and accompanying financial markets are concerned. The same John McCain who claims to be a 'maverick reformer' was once rebuked by the Senate for his involvement in the now-famous 'Keating Five' scandal. This issue is a loser for McCain due to his dark history of being an 'anything goes' supporter of greedy corporations. McCain's own economic advisor, disgraced former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, took a $42 million golden parachute for her failed efforts - a parting gift that McCain openly supported on national television. The Obama Campaign needs to make sure that American voters know this information about McCain well - and they need to do so relentlessly to drive the differences between Obama and McCain home in a decisive manner.
- Social Security/Health Care
The reason these two issues are listed as one area of focus is the congruence of their messages. John McCain has been an ardent supporter of the privatization of Social Security, yet he now believes that government must act to save the floundering financial markets - including the very stock market he suggests we all invest our Social Security in. He has also been a direct opponent of any national health care program, yet he has no problem with a trillion dollar bailout of corporations who couldn't manage their businesses responsibly.
Does anyone else see a gross, hypocritical contradiction in these inconsistencies?
McCain believes in sinking our Social Security dollars into a market that cannot correct itself without a massive government bailout, yet he doesn't think health care for low and middle-income working-class citizens is an initiative worthy of government dollars? I don't know about you, but to me McCain's positions on these two issues sure make him look like one who believes that big government is right to rescue Wall Street billionaires - but not those Americans struggling on Main Street.
There you have it, friends. Five golden issues that Barack Obama and the Democratic Party cannot lose with. The election is a little more than one month away - and it is time to kick the driving of our narrative into a whole new gear. We have been terrific at staying on message while Republicans flail away. Let's now drop the hammer and drive our case home to win this election early and decisively.
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